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About Me

Welcome!
To me, there is nothing more precious than our family.
We are all connected in some way, like the branches of a tree. This site explores those branches, sharing family stories and information - both known and yet to be discovered - so we can meet the people behind the names and gain insights into our own lives. If you have questions or wish to share your own memories or photo about a family on this site, please leave a comment, or contact me.

She shuddered at the idea of staying in archaic old hotels, walking through dusty shops, haggling over old things that would eventually sit on shelves to collect even more dust, and spending time with people her mother's age instead of other young adults.

Her father, Ralph Schiavon, turned a deaf ear to her protests. He did not want Alice to travel alone and knew how much she had looked forward to spending six weeks with her daughter away from the distractions of their daily lives. Moreover, he understood that Joan's experience in a wider world outside her own sheltered sphere in Chicago would benefit her in the long run more than he or Alice ever could do on their own. He arranged an comprehensive and elaborate itinerary for his wife and daughter and booked them on a transatlantic cruise on the luxurious R.M.S. Queen Mary.

My mother on the deck of the R.M.S. Queen Mary.

When the reluctant 22-year-old Joan walked up the gangway and stepped onto the deck of the enormous cruiseliner on that balmy August day, little did she know that this trip would become a defining moment in her life.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Margaret Yu, far right, circa 1950. I am not sure where this photo was
taken or whether the people with her were family members or friends.

My mother, Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca met Margaret Yu while both were attending Saint Francis College in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Margaret was an exchange student who had studied Linguistics at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and my mother was a drama major. They hit it off instantly and and began a friendship that flourished and deepened over the years until my mother's death in 1987.

Margaret came from a family of elite professors in Hong Kong. Her parents owned two neighboring houses, one built in Chinese style and the other built in Western style, on a hill overlooking Kowloon. One week the family would live in the Chinese house, speaking Mandarin and observing Chinese customs, and the next week they would move everyone - servants and all - into the Western house next door, where they would speak English and live according to British customs. My mother believed this accounted for Margaret's flawless English and impeccable manners.

Margaret was a highly cultured lady, having traveled with her parents and brothers and sisters around the world several times. She was well read and spoke several languages fluently, Mandarin, Cantonese, English, German, and French among others. Yet for all her worldliness and sophistication, she loved having fun just as much as the next young woman, and she and my mother spent their free time going to the theater, playing card games, or sipping root beer floats (also called "black cows" in the Midwest) with their classmates at Woolworth's lunch counter.

Having no family locally, Margaret frequently accompanied my mother on her weekend visits home to Chicago. The two of them would sit cross-legged on my mother's bed and talk late into the night, sometimes giggling so much that my grandparents, Ralph and Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon would have to knock on the bedroom door to ask them to keep the noise down. Even so, my grandparents loved Margaret and treated her like a special second daughter, allowing her all kinds of indulgences, such as sleeping in late in the morning and running around the house in her bright red Chinese silk pajamas. My grandfather delighted in her effusive compliments on his Italian cooking. At times she would reciprocate the favor, cooking elaborate Chinese dishes for the family.

Once my grandmother walked into the bedroom and found Margaret sitting straight up in bed, eyes closed and motionless. Fearing she might have had had a heart attack, my grandmother shook her, and Margaret awoke with a start. Margaret later explained that the Chinese slept that way because they believed that it would be easier for them to go straight to heaven if they died in their sleep. My grandmother never found out whether this was true or not, but she was quite relieved.

Margaret gave my mother this silk
embroidered Chinese purse in about
1948. My mother treasured it and carried it
proudly on special occasions.

Margaret Yu returned to Hong Kong at the close of the academic year, but she and my mother remained close friends all their lives. They wrote long letters to each other throughout the years, sharing everyday stories of their lives, hopes and dreams.

Margaret's letters were instantly recognizable. Printing her return address under her name, "Miss Margaret Yu," she always wrote on aerogrammes,. These were were thin, light blue letter stock, bearing imprinted postage images of Queen Elizabeth II (Hong Kong was still a British colony at that time) and labeled "Par Avion/Via Air Mail" in blue and red type. It was always exciting to see these exotic letters, often featuring red Chinese characters and sometimes even exquisite pre-printed drawings. How thin they were, yet how much news they contained!

My mother would slit the letters open carefully but eventually allowed us the honors as we grew older and more adept at such things. She breathlessly read "Auntie" Margaret's letters to my father, my sisters and me, as we crowded around her, glued to every word. Through these letters we got a taste of what it was like to live in Hong Kong during a pivotal time of economic and cultural turmoil. As the years passed, we began to feel as though we knew her almost as intimately as my mother did.

We heard about the linguistic classes she taught at the University of Hong Kong and of the books she wrote on the subject. We learned about the rise of factories that made the colony a manufacturing giant in the 60s. We heard harrowing stories of the chaos and riots in mainland China that spilled over into Hong Kong as Chairman Mao Zedong's Communist Party challenged British rule. Being young children, we wondered what Aunt Margaret meant when she said that a lot of the "intellectuals" had to go into hiding to avoid being rounded up by the Communists and that the Red Guard was indoctrinating children to turn in their parents for cultural "sins." And we listened closely at the dinner table as my parents discussed the latest letter detailing Aunt Margaret's efforts to join the mass exodus from the island, fearful of a Communist takeover.

In about 1967, my mother and father tried unsuccessfully to sponsor Margaret so she could emigrate to California. They wrote to our local Congressman, Don Edwards, the Department of State, and anyone else they thought could help. As we understood it, part of the problem was that so many people were trying to leave Hong Kong that the United States set a quota for the number of visas it could grant, which it did by a yearly lottery. We anticipated the lottery deadline every year, but Margaret's number was never drawn. After several years of unsuccessful attempts, she applied for and was accepted as an immigrant to Canada. She arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia in the early 1970s, where she settled near some of her relatives. My mother was dismayed that Margaret had not made it to the U.S., but she was relieved to know her dear friend had finally managed to leave Hong Kong after all the turmoil there.

My mother and Aunt Margaret finally had their long-awaited reunion in about 1973 or 74, when Margaret flew down from Vancouver to San Francisco International Airport. She stayed with us for a couple of weeks, and she and my mother stayed up late into the night laughing and catching up on life, just as they had when they were young college co-eds. When she returned home, there were just as many tears as there was laughter.

Aunt Margaret and I shared a mutual love of foreign languages, and when I announced that I wanted to learn 17 languages like her, she gently corrected me and said she only spoke only eight. She encouraged me to pursue my language studies and suggested that I should visit Hong Kong one day. Just knowing someone who could speak many languages made it seem more possible to study several myself, and I did just that. By 1977, things had calmed down in Hong Kong, and I went there on a familiarization tour for airline employees. I visited some of Aunt Margaret's friends on the faculty at the University of Hong Kong and had the time of my life. If not for her, I might never had gone there.

My mother and Aunt Margaret continued writing letters to each other as the years went by, but now they talked on the phone from time to time, too. In the summer of 1987, when my mother learned she had cancer, she wrote to Aunt Margaret to break the news. Margaret's quick response, below, penned in her elegant hand, comforted my mother beyond words:

July 31, 1987My dearest Joan,

Thank you ever so much for your letter. I was very very saddened & shocked by the bad news & couldn't be at ease for a whole day or two. I really don't know what to say to comfort you. I'm sure you'll know that I'll pray hard for you for a miracle from God to grant you minimum pain & eventual recovery. I know you have a lot of courage and have done your very best as a good wife, mother, citizen & friend and, prior to that a good daughter.

I am most grateful to you and yours for your generous love and goodwill to me all these years. My great regret has always been that I have not been able to invite you & your husband to come & visit me here as I live in a one-bed room apartment and for the last 10 years have not enjoyed robust health. I so wish to be able to travel down to visit you now but I have not been able to go anywhere for many years. My brothers & sisters come from Hong Kong, Toronto & Michigan to see me year by year & most of the them stay in a hotel - they can afford it, thank God.

I feel nostalgic for all the good times I did have with you and yours. I do remember your parents only too well. Your father bought us two tickets to see a beautiful Chinese play in Chicago and when I said I wanted to buy a watch he got me a lovely gold one for only $15 which I wore for many, many years. He cooked a lovely dinner at Easter for us. It was a fish with dressing that tasted so much like a favourite Chinese dish of mine. Your mother spoiled me right & left, letting me run around the house in my pyjamas all morning so that I could feel completely at home. She called my pajamas "fire-crackers" because the top was a bright fiery red. She was such a sweet kind lady and so hard-working on her dolls. I didn't say all this to you when I visited you in San Jose because I'm such a shy person about expressing my emotions, but I can assure you I did miss them.

Do let me know how you get on if you feel like writing and whether there is new medicine or treatment the doctor can give you which helps. How is Gilbert taking it all? Are some of your daughters there to look after you?

I am much older than you - 67 now - and have had lots & lots of pain for many years. But I am still up and going most days of the week. I pray God all the time to let me go to Him before too many more years - in peace.

Eleven years later, in April 1998, my husband and I and our young children drove north to British Columbia on Easter vacation. When we arrived in Vancouver, I phoned Aunt Margaret, eager to see her again.

It was not a good day for her. By now, she would have been about 78 years old. She apologized, saying that she was in poor health, and she asked me to call back two days later, on Wednesday afternoon. Wednesdays, she explained, were the days she received visitors. While this seemed a bit formal and old-fashioned, Margaret was very clear, and it was obvious that she had practiced this routine all her life. When I called two days later, there was no answer, and we left for home the next morning.

She continued to write to my father and me off and on after that, but her letters stopped eventually. We never found out why but guessed it had to do with her frail health.

Margaret Yu never married. I think she had several nieces and nephews who looked after her as she grew older, but in all fairness, they probably did not know all her friends to keep them informed about her progress as she grew older. I wish I knew what became of her, but I will never forget how much she meant to my mother and to all our family. She may not have been an official part of our family tree, but she will always hold a special place in our hearts as our honorable and beloved "Chinese Auntie."

Monday, September 24, 2012

My mother graduated from Aquinas High School in 1946, a year after the Second World War ended.

Joan Schiavon, Chicago, 1945

My grandparents decided my mother, Joan Joyce Schiavon, should attend college near their Chicago home, and they sent her to Saint Francis College in Indiana.

While there, she met a young exchange student from Hong Kong, Margaret Yu. Margaret had gone to Marquette University, where she majored in Linguistics. She and my mother became close friends, and Margaret spent many a night at the Schiavon household during weekend trips home to Chicago.

In her sophomore year, my mother transferred to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, as a drama major. I do not recall her reasons for doing this, but she loved it there, in part because it was far enough away from her sheltered life at home to have the freedom she craved.

Cover of the Drake University 1949 yearbook

I used to think the name of the Drake University yearbook (pictured on the cover at left), Quax, meant something significant in Latin. How naïve I was not to see that it was clever play on words - named for the noise a drake (an adult duck) makes! (Drake, of course, was not named for a duck but an Iowa state governor, Francis Marion Drake.)

My mother was not exactly the most serious student at the time, but she sure enjoyed campus life. She excelled in her favorite classes - drama and literature - but she also took classes in costume, social science, gym, and badminton. She ate lunch daily with her "chums" at the popular Benson's Restaurant at 2417 University Avenue in an area of Des Moines called "Dogtown," and she cheered on the Drake Bulldog college football team along with a number of her many admirers, or "dreamboat escorts," as she called them, many of whom she met in her drama classes or at the Newman Club.

Her yearbook is dotted with her breathless and exuberant descriptions of classmates and friends:

The Fine Arts majors - my mother is
on the bottom row, far right

"A real doll...met her in Women's League." "Real swell gal - in costume class" "Dick played pinocle til late one night. He and Bill took me to (the) football game - real sweet guy! ...Bill lived upstairs - a real dreamboat - I had an awful crush on him." "Lyle was a real ladies' man - but a sweet guy - in drama classes!" "Arlene was always borrowing my clothes - we double-dated at a party at my place." "Tall and blond and dreamy eyes - just my type - I was in charge of his costumes!"

My mother used to tell my sisters and me that she was too young to appreciate a college education at the time. Many women of that era, in fact, went to college to major in "marriage," hoping to find a husband and settle down and raise a family.

Whether her parents wanted this for her or not, they apparently were unimpressed with my mother's "social" studies and decided that their $400 annual tuition would be better invested in other ways. They called my mother home to Chicago in June 1949. She hated to leave her exciting life and friends at Drake, but she was otherwise glad the experiment was over.

It would be some years before she wished she had stayed and completed her degree, but she went on to become a savvy and successful businesswoman, all the same. When my sisters and I were young, she read to us constantly, making stories come alive with her dramatic interpretations. Often repeating the words of her college drama and Shakespeare professors, she encouraged us from an early age to write well and develop good diction. I can still hear her coaching us as we practiced school presentations to "Project! Project your voice so it reaches the back of the room! Make your voice heard!"

My mother stressed to us the value of education and encouraged us to seize every opportunity to make the most of our school years - and to never stop learning. Never was this more evident than in the last years of her life, when she became an assistant teacher for special education students at Modesto High School in Modesto, California. She had a way of inspiring even the toughest students to discover their potential and to excel.

Some people learn from books, and some people learn from experience. My precious mother did both, and by following her own advice, she became a wonderful example for us and many others we will never meet. As far as I am concerned, she was one of the smartest people I have ever known.

When I went to college, my mother encouraged me to join the Newman

Club, a social organization for young Catholic students. She often talked

about how much fun the Newman club was, but she does not seem to be

too excited about it here. Was she wishing she could be standing in

the upper rows among all those young men with an "x" over their heads?

Did you know Joan (Schiavon) Huesca or Margaret Yu, or are you a member of the Schiavon/Schiavone, Huesca, or Yu families? Did you attend Saint Francis College or Drake University in the late 1940s? If so, share your stories and comments below.